…an injured American crow I found lying in the gutter near our apartment on Wednesday the 24th. Oddly enough, I found him just a few hundred feet from where I found Charles Cecil Carpenter last summer.

I couldn’t tell what was wrong with him, so I picked him up, put him in a box, and tried to figure out what to do next. As I walked back to our apartment, tons of crows started cawing at me from the trees above. They followed me, flying from tree to tree all the way back to our front gate. It was like a scene out of The Birds… minus all of the eyeball pecking. Thankfully.

I decided to take Edgar to the California Wildlife Center in Calabasas. After an hour-long drive there, a $20 donation, and a two-hour drive back, Edgar was finally in good hands. At the very least, he wasn’t lying beak-down in the gutter.

Yesterday, I called in to check on him. The CWC wasn’t sure what was wrong with Edgar; still, they rattled off a long list of possibilities. He may have been malnourished. He could have been suffering some sort of nerve damage, or been struggling with a neurological disorder. He might have had the West Nile Virus, or just been an elderly crow who was going through the final stages of life.

To be honest, it didn’t matter what was wrong with Edgar because he died the next day, Thursday the 25th. My birthday.

Sorry I couldn’t be more help, Edgar. At the very least, I hope I made your final 24 hours on this planet a little bit better than being beak-down in the gutter.

Learn more about the California Wildlife Center (and donate if you can) here.

I mean, seriously, when KB and I do the same exact workout she finishes with a mild glisten on her forehead. Meanwhile, I emerge looking like a yak wearing a snowsuit that just spent nine hours doing Bikram Yoga in a sauna.